# Mold?



## 2skinny (Oct 28, 2015)

Does this look like mold? I would generally chalk this up to "plume" or "bloom" but the Mille Fleurs that came in today are dated March 15. Could cigars this young have bloom? It does wipe off without any residue left behind.









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## StogieNinja (Jul 29, 2009)

Definitely mold. As long as the feet aren't affected, just wipe them down and store them at a proper humidity moving forward, and they should be fine to smoke.


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## protekk (Oct 18, 2010)

What he said ^^^^. Though after wiping them down I would quarantine them in a seperate tupperware for a month or so to watch for a resurgence of mold.


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## 2skinny (Oct 28, 2015)

Thank you! They are wiped down and in quarantine. No mold in the foot. Everyone here has been huge help with any issues I have had. This is probably the best, least drama, forum I have ever been on. 


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## 2skinny (Oct 28, 2015)

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## elco69 (May 1, 2013)

2skinny said:


> This is probably the best, least drama, forum I have ever been on.


Just wait until I recruit you! Mike knows what's up :vs_blush:


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## Champagne InHand (Sep 14, 2015)

Because I grow wine grapes and dabble at winemaking I always have plenty of wine sulfur, chemically known as potassium Metabisulfite. It can be purchased in loose packs by the ounce or in tablets called Camden tablets. A tablet or roughly an with of a teaspoon is all it takes to keep wines fungus free in a 6 gallon carboy. I pour some of the water out of a new gallon of distilled water and put it in a pan to boil. I add less than 1/16th of a teaspoon or 1/4 of a Camden tablet. It dissolves easily in hot water. After some cooling I pour that back into the gallon jug of distilled water. After that I use the distilled to add to humidifiers while I still choose anti fungal PG solution in Xikar crystals or beads. 

Wiping down these smokes will not add any weird flavors and will only add a touch of this anti fungal liquid to the wrapper of the stick. I would wipe down the entire box and store it separately from the quarantined smokes. As the temps adjust a bit of that anti fungal PotMO, will begin to evaporate and circulate in the air. It's a long proven substance used in wine making since the middle ages. Before that they used real stink sulfur and added distillates or balsam oils which make for a very bizarre wine. 

I would recommend people buying boxes from humid areas like South Florida, Asia an this islands South of Miami. The one microbe that is resistant to the PtMO is wine and beer yeasts and only the heartier strands. With cigars I don't think you need to worry about the wine yeasts. The stuff is dirty cheap. Usually less than $4/ounce and available at any home brewing store or any online stores for beer and wine making. The tablets may be more handy but I always have a Ziploc bag with this crumbly powder at the house. I actually add that same solution and spray down the gaps in the basement between the walls and the floating basement concrete floor. I wipe down the wine cellars floor yearly and the wood racking but only half heartedly. 

Sometimes a good mold in dessert wines called botrytis or noble rot can come in on the corks of thick unctuous dessert wines. It's pretty harmless and seeks to move into the cork. On the grapes or cork all it wants if to drink off the water portion to stay alive. On grape clusters it looks nasty but those clusters are picked and wiped as the tiny berries are full of sugars and flavors. The berries are either tossed into casks where 200kg worth of these tiny berries produce a thick syrup of wine must but only about a liter to 1.5 liters. 

The wines made from this must is some of the most expensive and sought after wine throughout the ages. Known as Essencia in Hungary the Russian Imperial courts would dispatch a division of Cossacks to guard the production of this elixir and escort the finished product back to the Czar's personal wine cellar. 

It was some mystical that a Czar, or Tsar couldn't be pronounced dead until their lips and gums were coated in this elixir. I guess long ago a diabetic ruler within a diabetic coma, massive hypoglycemia jumped back to life as the elixir was swabbed throughout his mouth. His gums and mucous membranes absorbed the sugars buccally. I bet way back then it was declared a miracle but in truth it was the Czars sweet tooth that gave him the debilitating diabetes to begin with. Crazy stuff but coveted around the world. I've tasted it. Amazing stuff. Sometimes sold in 100ml vials for almost $100US. 

Most of this post was just an FYI or BTW story but this PotMO is a great way to stop any molds dead in its tracts. Molds are plentiful in dirt. Cigar factories have dirt or soil tracked in and molds and mildews will spore with the smallest amounts of sunlight and warmth. Once airborne those microscopic spores travel everywhere. I'm sure precautions are taken but in Socialist economies there isn't a ton of benefit from speaking up in the workplace. Cigars are the pride of Cuba but microscopic stuff is a bummer in everything from healthcare to agriculture when in these environments. Best to be prepared.


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## 2skinny (Oct 28, 2015)

Champagne, now that you mention it, we had issues when growing tobacco with "blue mold". This was a light blue mold that would attack the lowest tobacco leaves in very wet, humid weather. We would spray it down with an anti-fungal if it was caught in time. 
Thanks for the advice. 
BTW, now I want a bottle of Essencia!
I don't need any more vices! Lol


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## Bird-Dog (Oct 16, 2009)

Blue mold is a whole different story from the innocuous white mold on those PMF's. Derek was correct in telling you just to wipe the mold off and move forward. No chemicals necessary.

OTOH, if your cigars are attacked by blue mold the chances are they are goners.


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## eljimmy (Jun 27, 2009)

Yes, that is mold. As long as the mold isnt on the foot of the cigar you should be good. Wipe it off and keep away from humidity for a couple of days.


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## 2skinny (Oct 28, 2015)

Thanks for the advice everyone. Much appreciated. 


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## SonicDust187 (Nov 15, 2015)

How can you tell that its mold and not plume?


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## protekk (Oct 18, 2010)

It is easier to show mold but plume or bloom is the result of oils secreting from the wrapper of the cigar that crystallizes on the wrapper. Plume has a crystalline look not splotches of white fuzz like the above


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## Champagne InHand (Sep 14, 2015)

Mold can be really interesting and both dangerous and helpful. Penicillin mold on blue cheese has saved millions of lives, but ergotism in as well as LSD come from the waste product that are excreted from certain molds. Black mold is seriously bad, especially in basements or behind dry wall. When working in biotech pharmaceuticals the nasty stuff that attacks people that are immunosuppressed, like Mucor and such usually are fluorescent as the live deep underground. Purple and orange stuff are just nasty. 


What shall we have? An '82 Margaux! Is it any good? Good....?, It will make you believe in God!


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## Van_Wilderness (Sep 25, 2015)

elco69 said:


> Just wait until I recruit you! Mike knows what's up :vs_blush:


invest in coolers on sale during the winter :vs_shocked: :vs_rocking_banana:


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## Champagne InHand (Sep 14, 2015)

I use 2 gallon Ziploc freezer bags for overflow. The don't need to be deep treated like tupperdors and a great quarantine method. 


What shall we have? An '82 Margaux! Is it any good? Good....?, It will make you believe in God!


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## NasierK (Dec 4, 2013)

SonicDust187 said:


> How can you tell that its mold and not plume?


If you have to ask it's mold. 

Plum is much more evenly distributed. Perhaps slightly heavier in a spiral around the cigar following the edges of the wrapper. Mold looks a bit fluffy while plum looks a bit hard. It takes ages to get plum on the wrapper and even then only in the right conditions. Forget about seeing plum on a cigar under 5 years old. Mold is not evenly distrubuted and so you end up seeing small white cirkels on your cigar. Don't be surprised if you see both. A cigar can have mold and plum at the same time.


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## Rick Hendeson (Apr 8, 2014)

It's AIDS


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## jmcqueen (Dec 22, 2015)

i had a bit of this same exact mold on sticks in a couple of '14 boxes of partagas serie d no. 4's. i wiped them off and laid them down at 70/70. that was a month ago and the mold has stayed away. what you have posted, if that is the full extent of it, ain't nutt'in. btw, i am REALLY a partagas fan. very high value for the price paid.


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## Champagne InHand (Sep 14, 2015)

Love me some Partagas!


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## Rick Hendeson (Apr 8, 2014)

It's AIDS


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## jmcqueen (Dec 22, 2015)

rick, that'll be just about enough, fella.


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## havanajohn (Apr 4, 2009)

That def is mold... Here is plume :


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## Bird-Dog (Oct 16, 2009)

havanajohn said:


> That def is mold... Here is plume :


Not so sure about that pic. Looks like mold too. Is that your own photo, or something you picked up off the Internet?

From what I've seen, the vast majority of photos claiming to show plume are actually mold. I guess everyone wants to imagine that when they find white stuff on their cigars it means they're better instead of afflicted. Unfortunately, that's very, very rarely the case.


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## tomp (Dec 13, 2015)

This is plume from a 2008 Opus Phantom.


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## havanajohn (Apr 4, 2009)

curmudgeonista said:


> Not so sure about that pic. Looks like mold too. Is that your own photo, or something you picked up off the Internet?
> 
> From what I've seen, the vast majority of photos claiming to show plume are actually mold. I guess everyone wants to imagine that when they find white stuff on their cigars it means they're better instead of afflicted. Unfortunately, that's very, very rarely the case.


The photo is mine, the cigar is a Ashton ESG that was stored in my Aristocrat at 60% RH for at least 6 years. It is plume.


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## Bird-Dog (Oct 16, 2009)

havanajohn said:


> The photo is mine, the cigar is a Ashton ESG that was stored in my Aristocrat at 60% RH for at least 6 years. It is plume.


Did not mean to offend. I've just never seen plume follow a vein like that. I have seen mold do that.


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